


Backward, Tenderly

by rexluscus



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Blow Jobs, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Fingerfucking, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:55:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7034494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexluscus/pseuds/rexluscus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kylo Ren turns up after disappearing for a week, he hopes for a warm welcome from Hux. He doesn't get one. Not at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backward, Tenderly

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! An actual fic for a fandom I've been in for, what, five months? Many abject thanks to [carnival_papers](http://archiveofourown.org/users/carnival_papers/pseuds/carnival_papers) and [wyomingnot](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wyomingnot/pseuds/wyomingnot) for helping me with this diminutive yet strangely hard-to-write thing.
> 
> I've hit basically every Kylux trope it's possible to hit in this scenario. Uh, go me?

There's someone in Hux's quarters. He can just make out their body by the door, a dense black object in the scarcely thinner blackness. Hux lies frozen and gauges the distance to the blaster in his desk drawer. The body moves—clothing rustles and a boot squeaks. Sweating, Hux tenses his muscles for a leap.

The body collides with his coat-rack and knocks it clattering to the floor.

"Dammit," says an artificially modulated voice.

Hux untenses. Blinks up into the dark. With a groan, he rolls over and shuts his eyes.

Ren has been gone for a week. Whereabouts utterly unknown. In fact, he'd left right around this time—in the middle of the night—without saying when he'd return. Or even that he was leaving _._ Instead, Hux got to learn the news while reviewing the morning logs, which informed him that Ren's shuttle crew had been roused in the wee hours of the night-cycle with classified orders. When he'd tried to access those orders, five of his junior officers had watched as Central Intel rejected his request with no explanation.

So now Ren has crept back aboard at an identical hour, in an identical fashion, as if hoping Hux won't notice he was gone.

The figure untangles itself from the coat-rack, drags itself over to Hux's bed, and drops onto the mattress behind him.

"Hux."

He feigns a snore.

"Hux." The mattress shakes. "I know you're awake."

"Yes, how astute," Hux mutters. "You _woke_ me."

Mistaking, as he often does, acknowledgement for acceptance, Ren stretches out behind him and settles close. His robes reek of ash and engine oil. Hux spends a moment deducing where in the galaxy Ren's clothes might have picked up those scents before remembering not to care. 

When a tentative hand creeps up his side, Hux brushes it off.

"Hux—" Ren's sigh makes his vocoder emit a burst of static. The helmet does nothing to filter out the wheedling note in his voice.

"What the—" Hux looks over his shoulder. "Are you trying to spoon me with that _thing_ still on? We've talked about this."

Grumbling, Ren sits up. There's a hiss of depressurization and the helmet drops over the side of the bed with a thud. (Hux has never understood why it sounds like an iron barbell hitting the floor when it can't weigh much more than five kilos.) 

Ren lies back down, bringing with him the warm scent of his hair. Hux breathes it in grudgingly. "Don't know why you bother wearing that thing in here," he says. "Who do you think you're hiding from?"

"I don't wear it to _hide_."

Hux lets that obvious falsehood go unremarked upon.

He's almost asleep again when Ren begins kissing the nape of his neck, open-mouthed kisses that leave a wide trail of cooling spit from his hairline to the collar of his pajamas.

He lets out a weak groan. "Ren, I've got to be up in less than three hours."

"I want you," Ren growls, mashing his lips against Hux's skin. When Hux doesn't move, he adds teeth to his gentle mauling of Hux's neck. Shortly, he's pawing Hux up and down and humping his pajama-covered arse.

While Ren jostles him this way and that, Hux cracks his eyes open and lies there, thoroughly annoyed. He's almost curious how far Ren will get with a partner who could literally be unconscious or dead. On the other hand, he's too irritated to find out.

He finally puts a stop to it by jamming his elbow into Ren's stomach and shoving him to the far edge of the bed. Ren lets himself be pushed away and then lies still.

Hux shuts his eyes again and snuffles into his pillow.

"You're angry," says Ren.

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Hux tries to snap the words out, but the irony gets lost in the pillow.

"Why," asks Ren. His questions never sound like questions—which is appropriate, since he tends to ignore the answers. Hux doesn't bother answering this one. Ren keeps pushing. "Because I didn't tell you my orders," he ventures—again, a question that isn't a question. This time Hux's eyes jerk all the way open.

"I don't know why you even bother talking if you're simply going to pluck my thoughts from my head," he says coldly. 

"I didn't." Ren protests with the passion of a child. "I only—I guessed." Hux can hear the smirk when he adds, "Clearly I was right."

"Yes, well—" Hux releases his angry tension and sinks back into his pillow. "It doesn't exactly take a genius to work out that your occasional bedmate and, incidentally, co-commander might be irritated that you disappeared out of his quarters, into seeming thin air, in a fashion that subsequently undermined his authority when he was unable to _explain_ said disappearance to his command crew, who, by the way, already suspect some intimacy between you and thus expect him to be privy to your secrets."

Ren has no reply to this monologue. Hux has just begun to regret delivering it when a finger brushes the center of his back and trails, first up, then down. It tickles, and he shivers.

"I missed you," says Ren.

Hux sighs. 

He doesn't want to play the clingy lover. If he were truly strong, he would welcome Ren into bed as if Ren had never left, as if his comings and goings didn't rate Hux's notice. But it's too late for that; Ren would never believe it. Whatever face he shows—anger, eagerness, indifference—Ren has already won.

Earlier that week, Hux received two separate reports of violence between Resistance agents and unidentified "mercenaries" thought to answer directly to Supreme Leader Snoke. Some witnesses identified them as the Knights of Ren. In one incident, there were casualties on both sides. Requests for further information were, of course, denied.

Hux spent the days that followed appearing impassive to his nosey command crew while howling inside—at Ren, and at himself. Wondering how his state had deteriorated so far. How his interests had become so dangerously divided. Once, not so very long ago, he had risen every morning and gone to bed every night aflame with zeal for the First Order. Now, he hears of lives heroically lost in a First Order victory and feels nothing but dread.

Still, Ren came back. So Hux gets a reprieve from whatever day of reckoning he'll eventually face for this—crisis of loyalty. Ren's warm, breathing bulk crowding up behind him, the smell of his unwashed body, that finger stroking up and down his back—Hux can't help it: his balls are tingling and his cock is getting hard. Now that Ren's here, Hux doesn't _care_ where he's been. Slowly, reluctantly, with all the grudgery the gesture can convey, he reaches back and pulls Ren closer.

Ren surges against him and sucks his ear into his mouth.

"Dammit, Ren—" Hux squirms away even while grinding back against his crotch—a move Ren has forced him to perfect. "You're about as sensual as a teething baby."

"Mm." 

Ren is either agreeing or expressing disinterest in anything Hux says. Either way, the outcome is the same: he flips Hux smartly onto his back and fills Hux's mouth with his eager tongue. 

Hux splutters, swamped by Ren's horny, puppyish joy. But whereas Ren seems to be made of hands, Hux can only feel around for some part of Ren to catch hold of, at last rubbing the heel of his palm against the four or five layers of cloth between him and Ren's cock.

Ren breaks the kiss with a gasp and stares down at him, breathing loudly, full of overdramatic intensity.

"You _are_ in a mood tonight," Hux says, fighting a smile.

Ren's eyes glint behind the ragged curtain of his hair. He almost never smiles, but he's wearing a look Hux has come to think of as equivalent to a smile, calm and intent and benevolent. Hux likes it; he's missed it. He brushes the backs of his fingers down Ren's freckled cheek.

His heart skips a beat when he sees blood on those fingers. "You're wounded," he says, unnecessarily, the shock making him stupid.

Ren merely grunts and glances down at himself. "I was," he says, his voice as flat as ever. "I'm fine now."

"Well, regardless—" Hux recovers his composure and wipes his fingers off on Ren's robe— "this is my _bed_ , you barbarian. Can't you take your foul clothes off, at least?"

Ren huffs at the inconvenience but sits up. For a minute, Hux watches him struggle with the baffling puzzle of his many-layered armor, until it becomes clear that he isn't making progress as he twists inside his clothes, unable to lift his arms higher than his shoulders.

"Oh for heaven's sake—" Hux sits up and reaches for him— "you _are_ injured." He pushes Ren's hands aside and pulls his robes over his head one layer at a time, until at last he gets his hands on Ren's hot skin.

"I'm not bleeding anymore," Ren says. But he flinches when Hux touches the wound just below his left nipple.

"So, what ghoulish errand _have_ you been on?" Hux tries to sound as if he's just making small talk as he pushes Ren onto his back and examines three deep slashes, just barely scabbed over, that decorate Ren's chest and belly. "Am I permitted to know whose blood you're getting all over my sheets, besides your own?"

"Doesn't matter," says Ren, the muscles around his eyes tensing in pain. "They're dead."

"I assumed so," says Hux. Carefully he explores the wounds with his fingers to discover where, beneath the dried blood, the skin is actually broken. In addition to the cut on his left pectoral, there's one on the soft part of his upper abdomen just below his ribs, and another across his sternum, right over his heart. Ren might have killed his opponent, but not before they got rather close to killing him. Hux keeps his face blank, as if these thwarted jabs at Ren's heart don't flood his body with alarm. Kylo Ren does not, as a rule, let his enemies get this close.

When Hux runs a finger lightly over the skin between two wounds, Ren's breath catches and he shudders. It's not a shudder of pain. Turning to watch his face, Hux does it again, this time letting his fingers skim feather-light up his chest to circle his nipple.

"The target was foolish," Ren gasps, eyes squeezed shut. "He didn't have a chance."

"I'm sure he didn't," Hux soothes. They're just cuts and scratches, after all. The smell of Ren's blood and skin fill Hux's nostrils, and he gives in to an urge to lick Ren's chest, to taste the crust of salt and copper that would ordinarily revolt him. Ren moans and arches up into him, so that Hux can feel the pounding of his heart under his mouth. Emboldened, he presses his mouth to the wound itself, and Ren gives a startled gasp—half pain, half pleasure.

Hux may as well admit, these signs of violence excite him—whether Ren's been dealing or receiving. Wounded or not, Ren always survives; the wounds just prove his strength. And Hux loves having this unpredictable murderer in his bed. Not so long ago, he'd half-believed he'd be Ren's next victim; part of him wonders if he still might. But Ren eats out of his hand for now. Not because Snoke makes him—certainly not because he respects Hux's rank—but because he _wants_ to. With Ren in his bed, Hux feels invincible.

He tastes Ren's blood one more time, then sucks his nipple into his mouth. Ren moans impatiently, rolling his head to one side, and threads his fingers into Hux's hair (Hux tries not to think about how filthy they are). Hux gives his nipple a last gentle bite and pulls away with a sigh.

Ren's brow furrows. "Don't stop."

"If we don't dress those wounds now, we never will," Hux smiles. "Don't move." 

He gets up to find the bacta patches. When he returns, Ren is still on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

"Who were they, anyway?" Hux unwraps a sterile wipe and cleans the blood off Ren's chest, skirting around the wounds before dabbing carefully at the wounds themselves. Ren jerks but doesn't make a sound. "Spies? Traitors?" He scrubs the last of the blood away. "Jedi?"

Ren stiffens. Then he shrugs one shoulder. "You know I can't tell you."

Hux takes the bacta patches out of their packages. Ren's bulky muscles twitch as Hux lays a warm patch on one wound, then he makes a soft sound of relief as the bacta begins to work. The fool—he _was_ in pain. Hux puts another patch in place, and then a third. "You should be in medical," he tells him.

"I like the way you do it better," says Ren.

Hux reaches for his face. Halfway there, his hand jerks, pauses—then gives in and settles on Ren's cheek. Ren leans into the touch immediately, rubbing against Hux's hand like a cat without waiting for Hux to caress him. Hux laughs. "Like the tusk cat with a thorn in its paw," he murmurs.

"What?"

"Nothing." Hux lets himself stroke Ren's cheekbone with his thumb. Ren's lashes flutter, and he turns his face into Hux's hand, to kiss and lick his palm. Once he's had enough of that, he grabs Hux's wrist and pulls his hand down to his crotch. 

"What—does this need tending, too?" Hux keeps his face solemn as he fondles Ren's cock and balls through his pants. Ren makes a needy sound and shoves his erection at Hux's hand. "I suppose you fancy yourself the only one who's been deprived of attention all week?" In response, Ren gropes around for Hux's knee and feels his way up. He's not angled for a good grip, though, so Hux brushes him away and works on unfastening Ren's pants.

Ren lifts his hips to let Hux pull his pants down his thighs, groaning with pleasure as his cock springs out. At the sight, Hux puts aside the last of his anger and worry; he reaches out and loses himself in the feel of Ren's hot, smooth skin, in the pungent scent of his crotch. Ren smells of sex and sweat and that extra note of blood. "Stars, but you're a magnificent beast," he sighs, cupping Ren's heavy balls.

"I fucked my hand every night thinking about you," Ren murmurs earnestly, gazing up at Hux as if he's confessing his undying love.

Hux rewards him with a cool smile. "I'd like it better if you'd stuck something up your arse and imagined it was my cock."

Ren moans sharply. "I did that too."

"I'll bet you did." He leans over and kisses messily down Ren's chest while he works Ren's thighs apart, playing with his balls a little more, then sliding his foreskin up and down. Ren's cock is hot and velvety, the taut skin just loose enough to lubricate the head. Hux would never tell Ren this, but it's the most splendid cock he's ever seen, let alone touched. Ren's body is spectacular, bulky and brutish and vigorous—and the more scarred and wounded it gets, the more Hux loves it.

Hux climbs over Ren's thigh to kneel between his legs. "You can't go a day without something up inside you, can you?" Ren makes a pleased noise and rubs his cock against Hux's wrist, so Hux gives the shaft a squeeze. "You can't control yourself at all."

"No—uhn!" Ren's eyes roll back as Hux strokes him, no longer thinking straight enough to talk. Hux never reaches that point, himself; he's a font of obscenity right until he comes. But he can talk for both of them.

"I'm going to fall asleep in all my meetings tomorrow," Hux growls, jerking Ren's cock harder and feeling his rigid body vibrate with need. "And if anybody asks why, I'll just have to tell them the Master of the Knights of Ren is a dirty—" His free hand slips between Ren's thighs and his fingers curl up behind his balls— "nasty _child_ , who needs—" One finger slides into him— "constant _looking after_." Ren moans as he's stroked inside, his cock giving a mighty twitch. "Come on, then, Ren," Hux coos in his ear. "Shoot your filthy load all over yourself, like the little pervert you are." 

Ren's balls pulse and he spurts across his trembling belly, groaning with relief.

Hux eases himself down at Ren's side. Mesmerized, he combs his fingers through Ren's wet pubic hair, watching his belly shiver from his light touches.

Slowly, Ren catches his breath, his body relaxing against Hux's. "I should kill you for all the things you call me," he says resentfully.

Hux laughs and kisses his chin, then nips his slack lower lip. "I wouldn't do it if it didn't get you off so hard."

"I want to get _you_ off," Ren says, passionate and intense.

Hux smiles. "Let me come in your mouth."

"I want that," Ren breathes. He climbs over Hux and jerks his pajama bottoms down.

"Yes," Hux sighs as he slides into Ren's throat. "Oh yes, you gorgeous _bastard_." Ren makes an irritated noise around the head of Hux's cock—objecting, probably, to this exploitation of his silence. Hux pets his hair in apology. "You do have the finest, sweetest whore's mouth in the galaxy, you know," he moans, and the long, loving suck Ren gives him in reply says he took _those_ words for the sentimental nonsense they were. 

He shuts his eyes and floats, trying to stave off the end, breathing through the urge to come each time Ren's tongue squirms over the head of his cock. After the week he's had, it's bliss to be touched—to be startled awake and manhandled and bled on, to be disrespected and verbally abused, and finally to have his cock sucked dry with terrifying force by a man who could kill him in his sleep but (probably) won't. He smiles as Ren takes him deep enough that his throat massages every inch of Hux's cock. "Oh," he groans, "that's it, my darling, just like that."

His hand wanders over Ren's muscular arse. As he loses the battle to hold off his orgasm, he finds Ren's loosened hole and slips a finger back inside. The penetration makes Ren moan around his cock, and that's it—he comes with cock and fingers buried inside Ren, with the smooth, wet flutter of Ren's tenderest parts pulling him deeper in.

 

"Did you feel me feeling it?" Hux _knows_ Ren dips into his mind during sex. It's the one time he doesn't care.

"Yes." Ren nearly smiles—does his smile-equivalent. "You felt good."

Through Ren's eyes, Hux’s inner life inevitably disappoints him. He supposes he hoped for a bit more sophistication or nuance, that’s all. _Good_ , eh?—does the Ghost Nebula look "good" to Ren? On the other hand—he _did_ feel good. It felt really fucking _good_ to come in Ren's mouth. That's the only word for it.

Ren's thick hair feels good sliding through his fingers. Ren's skin, as smooth and hot as a cooking stone, feels good when Hux runs a flat-palmed hand over Ren's chest. Ren's body and Ren's mind, both tucked against his, drowsy and relaxed—it all feels pretty goddamned _good_.

Coming must relax Ren's mental barriers, because Hux often senses a layer of thoughts and feelings that aren't his own after they fuck. This time more than usual: in his mind, but somehow distinct from it, floating on top of his thoughts like a layer of warm water on top of cold. Little sparkling streamers of half-articulated thought float by— _I like Hux's skin—his shoulder smells nice—need to piss but don't want to get up_. Hux reaches out to touch each one, holding it in place for a moment before letting it move on. Ren seems to enjoy that. His mental presence curls around Hux's like a contented pet—stretching, grumbling, and snuggling close before dropping off to sleep. 

Following him, Hux sinks through the silty layers, sending his own thoughts out on the current— _I worry when you're gone—I hate seeing you in pain—you seem immortal but I know you're not._ Ren, already dreaming, radiates happiness at Hux's maudlin confessions, never suspecting they're real. Hux keeps sinking, eager to join him. And if he passes through regions of momentary cold— _it can't last—this will tear you apart—he's compromised, and so are you—_ he's asleep before he can feel it for long.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [Tumblr](http://rex-luscus.tumblr.com)!


End file.
